Groups Launch $200M Gigabit-per-second Broadband Project

alphadogg writes "An Ohio startup company has raised $200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday. Gigabit Squared will work with the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U), a coalition of 30 universities focused on improved broadband, to select six communities in which to build the ultra-fast broadband networks, they said. The two organizations will select winning communities between November and the first quarter of 2013, Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said. The new project comes at an important time, when many commercial broadband providers have stopped deploying next-generation networks, said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U and lead author of the FCC's 2010 national broadband plan."

Re:

[CimmerianX]

Don't feed the troll. And, for the record, I have met and worked with many talented African American programmers.

The color of one's skin is not a measure of the quality of the checked-n code.

Re:

[MickyTheIdiot]

3d holograms when we have a genius that comes up with the real time compression algorithms.

Re:

[MickyTheIdiot]

yes, all holograms are 3d. So stop your surly post right there...

Re:

[mcgrew]

Before you get digital holograms you're going to need a hell of a lot better screen resolution (at least as good as film) to display them. And the screen will need an LCD display backlit by lasers.

Re:

[fa2k]

What are they going to use it for, pron & torrents?

Sometimes it's very convenient to have a fast connection for research purposes. I'm a physics student, and if I need to analyse some data at home, I have the choice between downloading a data file (anywhere from 100 kB to 40 GB) and processing it locally or using some kind of remote desktop, e.g. networked X11. Having a fast connection would mean that I don't have to do something else while waiting for it to download / display.

That said, for my first year I did live in university accommodation, and the conn

Superb value

[Chrisq]

Groups Launch $200M Gigabit-per-second Broadband Project

200M Gigabits per second for a dollar - That's 200 petabits a second. I'll have that

Hollywood Trembles

[glorybe]

Download a full length movie in Twelve seconds. Hollywood will have a hissy fit for sure. Thank God for the huge hard drives now for sale.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[stephanruby]

So assuming your edge speed is already 75 kbps, your maximum average speed over the entire month will be less than 75.8 kilobytes per second (is my calculation correct?).

For most existing University students, that represents a significant decrease in service. So hopefully, that means they're only just planning to scam their investors of out of millions/billions of dollars, and not the Universities themselves.

Re:

[Covalent]

+1 insightful. When Napster first appeared, many many people were still using dial-up. This limited the impact, and even then the RIAA was having a hissy-fit. Fight as they might, downloading became the default method for obtaining music (legally and illegally).

Fast forward 15 years and internet speeds are now sufficient to do the same with movies. MPAA will have a similar hissy-fit, but I think it's safe to assume that in 5 years, downloading will become the default method for obtaining movies (legall

Re:

[hobarrera]

15 years? We already have the necessary speed.

Is "squared" the new "book"?

[A nonymous Coward]

I should trademark "squaredbook" and "booksquared".

I2

[l3v1]

What about Internet2 (internet2.edu)?

Re:

[MickyTheIdiot]

I've been involved with Internet2 in an ancillary way in the past (university departments I've been involved with have been involved with it somewhat, but what I did I wasn't directly involved) and my personal opinion is that isn't even close to what we need for "future" networking. I'm not expert and I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong, but Internet2 seems to be centralized and if that is the case it's the exact opposite of what we need for any sort of next generation network. Another problem is

Re:I2

[grommit]

I2 is meant for transmitting huge amounts of research data like black hole simulations between universities and other research institutions. GigU is meant to connect residential communities in the areas surrounding the member universities so they have access to fast broadband.

won't help much

[gsgriffin]

Except with torrents. Enter throttling from Web servers to make sure these users don't squeeze out the slow people like me at only 30Mbs. I still have trouble finding places online that even allow my connection to run at its full potential.

Re:

[PlusFiveTroll]

Oh, I'd love to have gig fiber at a number of businesses that run intra-city VPNs. Any number of businesses have sites that generate more data then can easily be sent with current broadband, just across town. I could switch from any number of fixed wireless links, or at least leave them around just for backup.

Re:won't help much

[Shinobi]

That depends a bit on where you download from/what part of the world you're in. I'm in Sweden, with a 100Mbit/s downstream, and I often reach 11.5MiB/s from websites, doing game updates etc even during peak times(Most Swedish ISP's don't work like US ISP's, so forget most of the conceptions you have gotten from using US ISP's). Most torrents fail to reach that speed, due to seeders being, well... bittorrent users...

One big problem, in the nordic countries, is some CDN's being cheapskates. If a file happens to be hosted on both Akamai and LimeLight Networks, the Akamai download will be 3MiB/s at best(which is rarely), while the LLNW download will reach 11.5MiB/s even at peak. You can also tell when Windows Update points you to a LLNW CDN, rather than Akamai, because updates download much faster.

Thus the irony of Akamai's State of the Internet report, when they are one of the speed bumps....

Fast is great, gigabit not necessary

[fa2k]

It makes a huge difference to go beyond 100 Mbit, but many systems can't handle a full gigabit. Also, many servers can serve exactly one client at 1 Gbit. I wish 10 Gig became more common and cheap, so most servers could use it. With a single SSD you could serve a few clients at gigabit speeds.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Server boards are already shipping with on-board 10GbE. Intel's new twinville controller offers a single chip 10G-baseT solution (RJ45 copper connections). We need the switch vendors to catch up but the future looks promising.

Re:

[slazzy]

I think it's kind of a chicken and egg situation. Once there are more clients with 100 MBPS + , hosting companies will be getting more demand for faster servers and connections. On the other hand, if more websites were capable of serving downloads at faster speeds there would be more demand for faster home connections... It has to start somewhere.

Re:

[compro01]

Nah, it'll take you at least 16 minutes to hit the cap.

Re:

[omnichad]

Your Comcast cap is 37GB?

already starting at University of Maine

[sunhou]

Private telecomm company GWI has already announced plans with the University of Maine (also part of Gig.U) to do this in the nearby Orono and Old Town communities [networkworld.com].

I'm curious to see the outcome a few years down the road, how it really affects anything.

Fiber to home or

[ThatsNotPudding]

Fiber to Gated Communities? I suspect only the already well-to-do enclaves near 'leet unis will be the only beneficiaries for some time, such as Palo Alto, Research Triangle, Ann Arbor... Grambling State? NDSU? Don't hold your breath.

Will they do it aboveground-only, though?

[Sosarian Avatar]

According to Sonic.net, the ISP that performed the fiber installation for Google in part of San Francisco and now is rolling it out in the North Bay, adding wires underground is costly/difficult enough that they'll only include neighborhoods/homes with existing above-ground wires for the foreseeable future. I wonder whether the same will apply to the Google Gig/sec project as well, and whether they'd then opt to exclude entire universities based on surrounding community wiring, or upgrade connections for s